


A Thousand and One Nights Apart

by henghost



Category: ITZY (Band)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24422209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henghost/pseuds/henghost
Summary: Due to the pandemic, Ryujin and Yeji haven't been able to meet in person. So for comfort, Yeji has taken to telling stories on their daily phone call. Stories she never seems to finish.
Relationships: Hwang Yeji/Shin Ryujin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	A Thousand and One Nights Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Idea inspired by / stolen from "Scheherezade" by Haruki Murakami, which is a very good short story that you should read.

_ It matters where you are... _

— “When the Sun Hits,” Slowdive

On their daily call, Yeji asks Ryujin if she’s ever broken into a house.

“Can’t say I have,” says Ryujin. She’s on her bed, in pajamas, exhausted from a day without movement. “Have you?”

“A couple, I guess.”

“That’s illegal.”

“I know. But it’s addictive. So what can you do?”

Ryujin sits up and turns to look out the window, and the streets below her parents’ apartment are gray and wet with rain and completely empty. Lights bloom in the distant fog. And seeing this, Ryujin begins to feel panicked and uneasy, and she asks Yeji to tell her more about the break-ins.

Yeji says, “The first time was when I was still in highschool. I had a crush, I guess.”

“A crush?”  
“There was this boy. A senior. He was on the soccer team and he was tall and sometimes he’d wipe sweat away with his shirt and when he did I could see his abs.”

“So you broke into his house.”

“Yeah. I guess I did.” 

At these hours when the sun begins its descent, Yeji’s voice gains a kind of sleepy aspect, as if they’re drifting to sleep in the same bed, muttering into one another’s ears. Ryujin can hear how close her mouth is to the phone. She imagines the shape of her lips, their thin and delicate curvature, sans lipstick at the moment, pink and full and soft.

“Would you like me to tell you about it?” asks Yeji.

“Would that make me an accomplice?”   


“You’re already my accomplice, Ryujin. And I think you’d want to hear the story either way.”

“...”

“So anyway, I found out where he lived through the school’s directory, and when his team had an away game I took the train over there, to the other side of town. His family lived on the third floor of an apartment building just outside the city, and I convinced their neighbour to let me in. I said I was supposed to feed their cat. I’ve always been a very good liar, as you know.

“Then I was inside. I was the only one there, and it excited me like nothing else. If you’ve never done it you can’t know, but it’s such an incredible feeling. It’s like being invincible. I found his room at the end of the hall, and I let myself in. My heart was pounding. What surprised me was how empty his room was. There were no posters on the wall, no clothes on the floor, all the books and magazines were arranged neatly on his shelves. All there was was his twin bed, tightly made, and a wooden desk in the far corner.

“I sat at the desk, in the chair he’d sat in many times before. There was nothing on the desk’s surface, so I started looking through the drawers. I don’t know what I wanted to find — maybe a journal or diary or note. But all I could find were office supplies. Pens and paper and stuff. I thought that was maybe a little odd. Didn’t he do anything besides school and soccer?

“But him and his family would be back soon, and so I took one of the pencils that was shorter than the others, because that meant he’d used it before, and put it in my backpack, and then I left. 

“I had it bad for this guy, Ryujin. I think as I’ve grown older I’ve become incapable of feeling that same kind of passion. But back then it was intense. So intense. I got home and I took out his pencil, and I ran it against my skin and put the eraser, which was neon pink, against my tongue and the roof of my mouth. It’s a little embarrassing to admit, I guess. 

“Ah, it’s getting late, isn’t it? I’m exhausted. Isn’t that strange? How tired you can get from doing nothing at all? Maybe it’s the anxiety. I guess the rest of the story will have to wait. Good night, Ryujin.”

“Good night, Yeji.”

The phone goes,  _ Click.  _ And now she’s alone again, and it bears down on her like a million tons. A dull fear builds in her chest. Yeji has been telling Ryujin stories every night since the separation. She hardly ever finishes them. Like Queen Scheherezade in “A Thousand and One Nights”. Delaying her execution one night at a time by keeping the king invested in her fictions. 

Maybe Yeji does it because she likes it, or maybe she does it simply to comfort Ryujin, who has perhaps been affected the most, within their group, by the isolation. In her childhood bedroom, which still contains stuffed animals from when she was eight, she can’t prevent the gnawing, impotent worry that consumes every waking thought. There’s nothing she can do. There’s nothing anyone can do, really. Maybe the world will end. Maybe it won’t. It’s just a matter of waiting. 

So, yes, she would have lost it a long time ago if it weren’t for Yeji. She can see her now, swimming in the blurry dark, salivating over the thought of this nameless boy, her full lips around the stolen pencil. It’s beautiful. 

Then she takes an Ambien, which is the only way she’ll be able to sleep, and she collapses into the mattress, and as she drifts away she wonders idly if she’s ever felt before the kind of passion Yeji described, but the blackness takes her before she finds an answer.

She dreams of leeches sucking from a giant squid.

#

“To continue where we left off,” says Yeji the next evening, “at school the next day I saw the boy I had a crush on making out with Min-sook, who was this girl from the volleyball team. Min-sook and I didn’t really get along. I spent lunch that day in a bathroom stall having a panic attack. The only thing that could calm me down was the taste of my pencil.

“So after school I arranged to perform another break-in. I was looking for that same invincible feeling. Of course, the timing would be much tighter this time around. I would have to be in and out like a phantom. 

“The neighbor let me in again, and I found his room in pretty much the same state I had left it. Now I went straight for his closet. I rummaged through his dresser. All his clothes were neatly folded and arranged in a way I imagine few teenagers’ wardrobes are. Who was he trying to impress? Me, I guess. 

“I eventually settled on a pair of these boxer-brief type things, which looked well-worn. I can still remember the smell, Ryujin. His sweat. His salty-sweet, well-fermented sweat, which had been wicked away from his most private anatomy. Oh god this is embarrassing.”

Ryujin laughs and Yeji groans.

“Anyway I pocketed his underwear and here an idea came to me: I would leave a calling card. That was what the master burglars were always doing in the movies, right? An ace of spades, a lipsticked kiss on a napkin — that kind of thing. And so I, the great Love Thief, would leave as my signature a single strand of my hair, which was even longer then than it is now. That way he would know someone — some girl — had visited him. Then I was gone, like a black cat slipping into the night.

“I spent a lot of time with his underwear. I kept it in a ziploc bag so the scent wouldn’t evaporate away. I was very worried about that. But it never happened, in the end. It was like magic. I cradled that cloth like it was a child, every spare moment I could find. I kissed it and squeezed it. I didn’t even know why….”

“So did he find your hair?” asks Ryujin. “Did he suspect you?”

“I think that’s a story for another time,” says Yeji, and her grin is audible.

#

Later that night Ryujin draws a portrait of Yeji in her notebook. She takes great care to get the line of her jaw, the curve of her nose, just right. A mistake here could prove disastrous. Yeji is so beautiful. There’s no getting around it. When she finishes the drawing she captions it: The Love Thief. 

A year or two ago the Company had made the group take a special class . Not for singing or dancing but for intimacy. That was the name of the class: Intimacy 101. 

The teacher, this elderly guy who wore his old dog tags, explained the first day: “So you want to be idols, huh? You little girls want to be idols? Ha! Well, you’ve got a thing or two to learn before that can happen. It might be difficult for your little brains to understand this, but there’s a lot more to it than singing or dancing or being ‘cute’. I bet you didn’t even know.”

At this point Ryujin rolled her eyes, and the man (whose name she forgets) slammed his hand on his podium and pointed at her and said, “This is what I’m saying, little girl — you are woefully unprepared. You don’t even know what you’re selling. It’s laughable. Really, it’s laughable. You think your revenue comes from ‘good music’ or ‘a fun concept’? Ha ha ha. Oh no, not at all. All your money will come from intimacy.”

Intimacy, as he went on to explain, was shorthand for a kind of illusion-based advertising. Because he was right, after all. The product in their industry wasn’t music. The product was them. So the teacher illustrated how to convey in public appearances the kind of charm and charisma that would make the consuming masses beg for more. 

_ Don’t you want to know us better?  _ is the message.  _ Don’t you want to be a part of our clique? Then buy more. Buy so much you feel like you could touch us. _

Ryujin carefully peels the page marked Love Thief out of her notebook, and she kisses the lips she has just drawn. She lays the paper on her desk. Only a few weeks ago she would have had someone to talk to right now. She and Yeji would have gosipped until their throats went raw, and then maybe, if the night was as cold as this one, they would have slept in the same bed. For warmth. 

But now, apart, isolated, cold, she wonders if this is how the consuming masses feel. Able only to relieve the pain by spending a few minutes each day in the opiate haze of someone else’s story.

She takes another Ambien — the seventh night in a row now. She’ll never be able to get to bed without one at this rate. Then before slipping under her quilt she looks again at her sketched Yeji, and she feels this big shot of ice in her heart, because now the answer has come: she has felt burning passion before. Of course she has. It’s just that she’s been so stupid about it. She’s made so many mistakes. There is so much she regrets. There is so much she would do right now if not for this sterile, freezing prison. But she’s only human, in the end. 

She kisses Yeji’s scribbled mouth again, and when she raises her head there’s a little pool of damp seeping through the flimsy paper. 

#

“The third and final time I broke into this guy’s house,” says Yeji, “was a few days later. There wasn’t any inciting incident. I was just desperate. Lonely. As hard as it may be to believe now, I was kind of a wallflower at that age. I didn’t have many friends. It wasn’t like I had a real chance with this guy.

“His home hadn’t changed. Still suspiciously clean, which was a shame. Secrets get knocked loose in the mess. It wouldn’t deter me, though. I searched every crevice of his room. Every drawer, every hidden space, even under the mattress. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“I was about to go home empty handed, but then I realized there was one place I hadn’t checked. Behind the dresser in his closet, the one I’d taken the underwear from earlier. It called to me like a siren. I pulled it out, and I peered behind it. There was something there. Papers. I reached down into the dark and plucked them from their hiding spot.

“What were these hidden documents? Well, to me, they looked like hand-drawn pornography. Mostly nude women, some nude men. All of them in lewd situations, the exact nature of which I won’t divulge to you, Ryujin, because frankly they disturbed me. And but suddenly it all caught up with me. What I was doing was wrong. So unspeakably wrong. I rushed to put everything back, then I practically sprinted out of the building.

“And then on the train home, I realized I no longer had a crush on this boy. Not because I thought any lower of him for what I’d found. I still knew he was kind. And certainly he was still attractive. But it was like some curtain had been peeled back, which had revealed to me too much detail all at once. So much lurid detail that I couldn’t possibly go on living in this strange fantasy like I had been.

“I got home and threw away his pencil and, reluctantly, his underwear. This had to stop. After that I never broke into his house again. Which isn’t to say I never broke in anywhere else, but you’ll have to wait to hear about that…”

“But you never answered the question,” says Ryujin. “Did he ever find out about what you did? Did you ever confront him about the porn? Did he ever have a change of heart and begin to pine after you?”

“Hm,” says Yeji. “Well, it’s a little complicated. I’m not sure I want to get into it right now. I think my parents are going to make me take a walk with them soon.”

Ryujin rolls her eyes and smiles —  _ of course.  _ Then she says, “Hey, Yeji, before you go…”

“Yeah?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Go ahead.”

She sighs, and for a moment it feels like she could really do it. She could spill her guts right now. There’s nothing to stop her. All this weight on her would be lifted, just like that.

She says, “Uh, it’s nothing really. It’s just that I miss you.”

“Aww. I miss you, too. Oh god, do you hear that? My mom’s screaming at me. I really have to go.”

And Ryujin is about to say something else, but Yeji hangs up.

That night, in her drugged stupor, she cries herself to sleep. She calls herself a coward. She calls herself stupid. Not that it helps. 

#

Weeks later, the world hasn’t ended (yet), and it’s time for them to be reunited. They move back into their dorm. They hug, even though they’re not really supposed to. They throw a party. Chaeryeong sneaks in some booze, which makes them all feel warm enough to melt away the month’s worth of ice. It’s like it never happened.

And at night, they’re alone together. They both could sleep for a million years, but they push the desire away because every second in the same room feels like a gift from god. They lie on the floor and talk for hours, and Ryujin, who is tipsy with beer and relief, feels like she could really do it this time. It’s the perfect moment.

But unfortunately our time is up. This is where we have to leave them. 


End file.
